CMOs Say Digital Marketing Now Mainstream at Large Companies
A recent Gartner study confirms what most of us have known for a while — digital marketing has become conventional marketing at large companies (and probably many SMB companies as well).
Virtually all of the CMOs at 330 large organizations (mean annual revenue of $5.4 billion) said online and offline marketing are merging. As these practices come together, marketing and selling are fusing to form an integrated, closed-loop discipline.
While marketing budgets are growing, the increases are primarily funding heightened management expectations around digital commerce, marketing innovation, lead-to-sales conversion, and customer retention. One-third of the marketing budget is now earmarked for technology and infrastructure. About 70% of those surveyed are spending on marketing innovation – projects such as virtual assistants, augmented reality, and marketing data hubs to name a few.
This quest for more effective and efficient marketing is not surprising since three-quarters of the surveyed CMOs said they own or share profit and loss responsibility.